---
title: He had two tails, but he did not fare better than the first. — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He had two tails, but he did not fare better than the first. Who acts: knock. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, First Story, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, First Story, sentence 26

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He had two tails, but he did not fare better than the first.

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**Who acts:** knock · **What happens:** have, not fare · **To what, where:** two tails

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, First Story. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (knock), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2591:54:26
# text = He had two tails, but he did not fare better than the first.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	4	nummod	_	_
4	tails	tail	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
8	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
9	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
10	fare	fare	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
11	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	10	xcomp	_	_
12	than	than	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	first	first	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | knock | two tails |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tail=Patient |
| 2 | **not** **fare** | past · do-support | knock |  |  |  |  | good *property* | tree rules |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 2591 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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